


Snow

by CallMeElle



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Christmas, F/M, Mild Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:35:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28306866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CallMeElle/pseuds/CallMeElle
Summary: They talk, until the sun does rise over Iris's window sill. And Barry rolls onto his back to pull her atop him, fingering into her until she’s dripping down his wrist. He sheathes himself and pushes himself into her, wet hands holding onto her hips as she takes over, grinding down onto him until they’re both a simpering, moaning mess, soaked and sated. After, Iris cuddles on top of him again, her mouth against his throat as she tells him, “of course, we’ll go out later,” when he whispers the question into hair.They fall asleep to the still quietly falling snow.Or, softly falling snow, spiked hot chocolate, and some light smut for the holiday seasons.
Relationships: Barry Allen/Iris West
Comments: 8
Kudos: 83





	Snow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DameinToyland](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DameinToyland/gifts).



> Gifted to @dameintoyland on Tumblr for the Flash Holiday Gift Exchange.

_I want a snowfall kind of love, the kind of love that quiets the world._

When the snow starts, Barry recognizes how ridiculous it was to decide to walk to the store in the middle of the night. But, in the end, he’s sure it had been worth it.

It’d been because of a mere case of insomnia, that and the gnawing need for sustenance. A look into his refrigerator had revealed only a carton of expired eggs, an empty jug of orange juice, and a ridiculous amount of condiment bottles, so he’d stuffed his socked feet into a pair of sneakers, zipped himself into a coat, and jammed a beanie on top of his head before he’d ventured out into the cold.

When the snow starts, he’s only a few minutes into the fifteen minute walk to the grocery store. His collar is pulled up and his hands are stuffed into the pockets of his sweatpants as he takes cursory glances at the world around him. The snow is just flurries, tiny drops that appear more like rain before it hits the ground, but Barry knows how picturesque this place will look when the snow gets going in earnest. The little neighborhood he lives in, one they’re calling the arts district, is filled with tiny shops owned by rich women and their Etsy jewelry, restaurants where the food speaks, murals painted on every single building that depicts a sort of effortless diversity that isn’t actually true for the area. That’s even more notable when he looks at all of the Christmas decorations in the windows of the shops, sparkling garland wrapped around every available column, bright green wreaths chock-full of shiny gold ornaments, brilliant red bows on door handles and lamp posts. It’s all been up, much to Barry’s chagrin, since the season apparently started on November 1st, and it’s why he’s survived on work, take-out, and _The West Wing_ since.

He curses his own absurdity as he enters the small grocery store and picks up an arm cart with a half frozen hand. The store is one of those small ones, the ones that sell mostly single serving portions at regular prices, the store’s bright lights and gleaming floors convincing customers it’s worth paying five dollars for a half a carton of eggs. They’ve been bit by the Christmas bug too, a song he doesn’t know, _I want a snowfall kind of love, that lights up the sky from below; I want a snowfall kind of love, that brings people to their window,_ playing in the background. They’ve managed to plop a tree smack dab in the middle of the store and the aisles are full of what he’s sure the manager thinks are only subtle odes to this godforsaken holiday.

He tries to be quick, to hurry home before he has to start sliding through the snow. He throws a loaf of bread into his cart, some cheese and eggs, packages of bacon and deli ham. He remembers that they’ve got a pretty decent frozen pizza section too, so he grabs a couple of those, trying not to focus on the fact that he’s 27 and lonely and still eating like he did when he was in undergrad—and let’s be honest, in grad school too. He rounds another corner to decide on a six-pack, or two, of beer. And that’s when he sees her.

She’s a petite thing, shorter than she normally looks when Barry sees her hightailing it from the apartment across from his, in pencil skirts and shoes with heels like spikes. Her hair usually falls straight against her shoulder blades, soft looking and shiny, and he’s only ever seen her mouth painted in shades of purple and red. Tonight, this morning, she’s as dressed down as he’s ever seen her. She's only in a pair of gray leggings, a tight white t-shirt that cups her firm chest, a faux fur-lined coat thrown over it. Her hair is in a curly wavy style that falls right at her shoulders, and he likes it, how soft and sweet it makes her look.

When he sees her in the mornings, as she’s leaving their building, it makes him a little tongue-tied, especially when she’s in those tucked in blouses that show off the deep curve of her waist. The look of her like this, though, makes Barry wonder what it feels like to have heart palpitations and if he’s having them.

He’s watching her, probably a little creepily, and so when she turns, she catches her eyes. Now, Barry really can’t breathe. Her face is improbably pretty: deep ochre skin, dark chocolate eyes, a full pouty mouth that calls for his attention as she bites at the bottom one. He thinks, for a moment, of what it might be like to be beside her, naked, her lovely brown skin next to his paler body, her small, soft hands laced in his. He wonders, in the same moment, what it might be like to kiss her—her mouth, the soft heat between her legs—her long-lashed eyes closed in ecstasy. It paints a pretty vivid picture and Barry is sure he loses a bit of time.

“Oh, I know you,” she says, a hint of passion in her voice.

Barry blinks, looks behind him at the freezer full of overpriced beer, and then back to where there’s more than a hint of a smirk on her face.

“You mean me?”

“Yeah. You’re the one with the lab coat.”

Barry would like to note that as long as she’s been living across from him, a few months now, he’s been hoping for glimpses of her each time he’s left his own apartment. It’s a bit astonishing to know that she’s noticed him too.

“I, uh, yeah,” he mumbles, reaching up the rub at the back of his head. “I, I wear a lab coat.”

“Nice,” she says, and there’s some honey in the way she says the word, the way it drips down off her tongue.

Barry tilts his head, a bit incredulous. “Lab coats get you off?”

It isn’t what he meant to say, but her grin gets wider and there’s no doubt that Barry’s face goes bright red.

“I didn’t mean…” he starts, but the words get stuck.

She doesn’t seem offended. If anything, her grin gets wider, turns dirtier, and she winks at him as she starts to push her cart away. “See ya, lab coat.

“Wait,” he calls, and she turns, neatly shaped eyebrows raised.

“It's, uh, it's Barry, Barry Allen," he manages to get out.

“I'm Iris West," she tells him. And then she—and Barry admits he could be hallucinating, admits that he might be high off the scent of her, of shea and coconut—gives him a slow, long look over, taking in the length of his legs and his slim torso, his broad shoulders. She lingers, in a few places he’s sure, at his crotch and somewhere around his throat, and then she's looking at his face again. She licks her lips. "I'll see you around, Barry Allen."

That should be it, Barry thinks, as she leaves the aisle and he presses as much of himself against the cold freezer glass as he can. _Good lord._ But then Barry pays for his food with the scowling person they’ve convinced to work the night shift at a 24 hour grocery store, and then he’s walking out of the store, clutching his purchases, prepared to make his way back home. And then Iris West is calling out for him, her car idling at the corner beside him. 

“Just taking a late night stroll?” she wonders.

He licks at his lips where they've suddenly gone dry. "Yeah. I got hungry and there wasn't any food in my apartment."

“So you thought a quick walk in the snow would do it?"

Were it anyone else, he thinks he might have been annoyed at her for goading him. But she's pretty and he likes the way her dark eyes sparkle with mirth, and something a bit deeper, darker, when she looks at him.

“I feel like you're judging me," he says, his own mouth quirking up.

“Of course I am." She pauses as she turns back into the car. She seems to be moving things around. “Get in, Barry Allen."

They don’t make much conversation on the short ride to their apartment building. The night is quiet on the empty streets, made quieter by the radio turned off and only the hum of the heater as noise. He wants to talk, but he doesn’t know what to say, or if she even wants to speak, so he let’s the ride soothe him. It reminds him of time spent with his parents, years ago. He’d always had trouble sleeping, a condition that has no true origins. But, sometimes, when he couldn’t get to sleep and he’d started to get grumpy because of it, his parents would bundle him up, sit him in the back of the car, and drive around until easy listening jazz and soft falling snow had lulled him to sleep. It’s one of many memories of his family, of the parents he’d lost when he’d been old enough to register their absence. He tries to keep them at bay, those memories that could turn overwhelming and crippling were he to let it.

Christmas doesn’t help. They’d been big Christmas people, spending the Friday after Thanksgiving picking out a tree and dusting off ornaments that had been sitting in the attic for the year, baking cookies as they let him throw tinsel everywhere. The last year he'd had with them, when he was seven years old and had just begun wearing those hideous coke-bottle top glasses, had been the biggest one yet. He'd been allowed to do more: actually pick the Christmas tree, carefully put the cookies in the oven, write out the full thank you for Santa Claus. It'd all been so exhilarating, until the day after Christmas, when date night had turned into a crushed car and stoic police officers and a bull faced woman who'd made him throw clothes in a duffle bag he hadn't owned; when he’d been stuck with the reality that the last time he would ever see his parents was through the window of his old house, Christmas lights blinking back at him.

“Hey, we’re here."

It’s only when she speaks that Barry notices they’ve stopped and she’s parked in one of the spots designated for their building. He looks at her, blinking back into the present. He answers the question written all over her face.

“Oh, yes. I'm," he shakes his head, trying to clear it. He swallows. "Yeah, I'm good."

This time, the smile she gives him is kind. 

“Sure?"

“Yeah." He rubs at his eyes. "Let's get inside before the snow starts falling more."

Later, Barry will give half a thought to what makes Iris West invite him into her apartment. They both schlep up the stairs to their third floor apartments, bags in hand, Barry trying not to wish her coat would rise a little higher as he follows behind her. He grabs his key from the pocket of his sweatpants, poised with a hand at the door, and when he turns to tell her good night, she’s staring back at him, her teeth sunk into her bottom lip. If he didn’t know any better, he might think she was nervous.

“Chances you’d want to come in?” she blurts, “for some hot chocolate?”

Barry has two choices here. He can say thank you and go into his apartment, where the snow will still be falling and he’ll drink at least two of the beers he bought, and he’ll think about what he and his parents might’ve been doing for this Christmas holiday. Or he can go into the apartment of the woman he’s been drooling after for months and share some hot chocolate. 

So really, there’s no choice at all.

************

The clock on Iris’s microwave reads 1:15 when he finds himself standing beside her stove.

When they’d first come into the apartment, she’d left him awkwardly at the door while she’d gone to change. He’d kicked off his shoes at the door, placed his coat on one of the hooks near her door, and then he’d taken a casual glance around the room. Her apartment has the same layout as his, an open floor plan with a large living room and nice sized kitchen, a large island separating the two rooms in lieu of a dining area. A hallway off the living room leads to two bedrooms and a separate bathroom. That is where the similarities end, though. Her place is cozy, the living room featuring an overstuffed couch in a robin's blue fabric and a cream colored loveseat. A large rug under a distressed cream coffee table in a swirling pattern of blues and golds and greens ties it all together. It's a far cry from the hand me down-albeit comfortable-sectional that takes up most of his living area and the hardwood floors he hadn't bothered to cover when he realized that any decent rug cost his grocery bill for a couple weeks.

Even more is the fact that it's decorated for Christmas. There's a neat tree in the corner, teeming with shiny ornaments and blue garland and strings of white lights. There's some gold and silver tinsel thrown artfully in a way that Barry would never be able to manage, and even his cold, anti-Christmas heart can admit that with the giant blue, gold, and cream bow at the top, the tree is beautiful. Other knick knacks find their places around the room: two stockings on her mantle, a few blue bows tied on various pieces of furniture, an intricate figurine of a black Santa Claus. He’d thought that he should have figured her for a Christmas person.

When she'd come back, it’d been confirmed. She'd thrown on a pajama short set, the top with buttons and a collar, the bottoms showing the expanse of legs that look too long for her short stature, all of it in candy cane stripes. Barry doesn't always love the symbols of Christmas, especially those that remind him too much of the last one he had with his parents, but nothing in Barry's body objected to seeing her walking out like that, not even the reindeer socks covering her feet and ankles. He's glad that he'd showered and thrown on clean clothes after his Netflix binge.

Now, he stands beside her as she whisks cocoa powder into a large saucepan full of milk and sugar. Her kitchen is neat and clean, with bright yellow accessories and framed quotes that claim her love of coffee.

“Did you ever make cocoa with your parents?”

He glances down at his socked feet, and then over at her. She's still whisking, her small hands and nude nails gently gripping the base of the whisk. His heart clenches at the question, but when she starts speaking without his answer, he thinks maybe it expands, just a little bit.

“My grandma swore by homemade hot chocolate. Homemade everything, really. She'd only ever make it in December and only on Sunday nights. It was a thing to look forward to, I guess, a sort of tradition.”

“Does she still make it every Sunday in December?”

She shakes her head, her answering smile only a touch sad. "No. She died when I was 15."

Barry wonders how she does it, says the words without the pain of death overtaking her, without the memory of drinking hot cocoa with her grandmother sending her running away from milk and chocolate and sugar.

“I,” he says, and decides that this must be the way people feel when he used to tell them about his own parents, full of pity and sympathy. “I’m really sorry, Iris.”

“Thanks. She was ready to go, so I think I made peace with it early on."

Barry stays leaned against the counter as he watches her, the stirring methodical, an easy, constant clockwise motion. “Did your grandmother teach you how to make anything else?”

“She tried,” Iris tells him, laughing up at him. “But it never took. I am woefully inadequate in the kitchen.”

There’s something about a woman like Iris, beautiful and seemingly kind, that intimidates him. She seems so self assured, so well-adjusted, that he seems too good for him, like he’d only manage to bring her down into the depths of his own grief if he wasn’t careful.

“Can you cook?” She wants to know.

He shakes his head. “I literally just bought frozen pizza and eggs.”

“Good.” She gives him a sharp nod. “If you could cook on top of being this cute, I’m not sure I’d let you leave this apartment.”

Barry leans down and catches her eyes. “I could learn, if you wanted me to.”

Iris hums, holding his eyes, and hers flash, white teeth biting into her bottom lip. It feels like heat, swirling around them, taking over, settling in the middle of the kitchen. It feels tight, his entire body, the result of a strange mix of swirling thoughts and deep-rooted emotions. There’s the underlying feel of heartache, a steady companion since his childhood. The loneliness that usually accompanies has taken a backseat to the growing lust flooding his system, the tightening of his chest and the tingling in his hands he gets when he looks at her. He isn’t normally a flirt, is normally a fumbling mess when he gets around beautiful women. But it’s her, _this_ woman, that makes him feel a touch bolder, a touch daring, a bit more like he would be if he didn’t live so much in his head.

“It’s time for chocolate chips,” she announces, and it’s the only warning Barry gets before she’s suddenly pressed against him. In reality, it’s quick, he knows it is. She merely reaches over him to grab a package of chocolate chips from the cupboard above his head. But _god_ , if the world doesn’t stop moving as he feels the full length of her, supple thighs flush against the hardness of his, her flat belly and firm breasts almost molded to him. The smell of her is overpowering, the coconut and shea butter, the cocoa powder she’d stirred into the milk.

Barry swallows as she steps back into her own space. He would think that the moment would be gone, that her dropping those chocolate chips into the pan and stirring them to melt them faster would calm him down. It doesn’t.

It’s there, festering, as she finishes the hot chocolate, pouring the sweet drinks into giant mugs and topping them with a bit of Bailey’s. That earns him a wink, the gesture even more potent than the boozy cream he’s drinking on a mostly empty stomach. He follows her to her living room, where she sits down on the couch and motions for him to do the same. She grabs a blanket from the top of the couch and spreads it out with one hand, placing it over her lap and his, closing the distance between them just a little. He sits with his back fully against the sofa, but she’s cross-legged facing him, her attention on him intense. The room adds to it all, the Christmas tree providing the only light in the room, the small white lights casting shadows across her face. It doesn’t help, or it doesn’t hurt rather, this smooth setting. It brings it all to the forefront, the lust flowing as easily through his veins as the blood tends to do.

The following order of events he’ll give more than half a thought. He’ll question, but certainly not complain about, how they go from talking to falling against her bed, naked and twisted in her sheets.

The questions start innocently enough: how old are you? What’s your career? What are your hobbies? He finds that she’s 28 to his 27, a journalist to his research scientist, loves hiking to his personal science experiments. It’s almost like a date, the way they laugh with each other over their mugs, the spiked chocolate the invitation they need to go deeper than he imagines either of them would on a first date, to bare secrets he’d probably never speak aloud. 

He learns that she’s been watching him, waiting for a chance to speak to him, except the combination of her rushing and his own grumpy morning face kept her from reaching out. He tells her that the feeling was mutual, that he’d had improper thoughts of her after seeing her in those skirts, that he’d figured she’d never go for a guy like him so he’d just kept his distance. This takes them into deeper, dirtier waters. She wants to know his type, and he tells her, between warming sips of chocolate, that “I didn’t know, until recently, my love for women with deep brown skin and wide set eyes, and a mouth I want to sink into.” It’s the Bailey’s, he knows, but it’s her too, and him when he’s with her, and he likes the way the words tumble from his mouth, the way she pulls the words from him.

If she were lighter, he figures there might be a touch of red at her cheeks, but she only looks down for a brief moment, a long pink tongue swiping over that bottom lip, and he watches as much as hears her say, “I always wonder if those moles are just on your face, at your throat, or if they’re everywhere else,” and Barry swallows at how her eyes drop down, as if she can see beneath his t-shirt where more moles are peppered, as if she can tell that they’re dotted on his thighs too, right around where he’s slowly growing thick and hard.

It’s after this revelation, that the tides turn.

He watches her, for signs that this isn’t just the talking of strangers drunk of chocolate and each other. There is the rise and fall of her chest, the parted lips, her eyes that keep caressing the length of him. There is her leaning towards him, her body titled enough that he can look down the front of her top, where the mounds of her breasts are free, calling for his teeth and tongue. He swallows the rest of his drink and sits the mug down on her coffee table. Iris’s moves are similar, yet more deliberate. Barry finds himself enamored by the column of her throat as she drinks, by her nude brown nails as she wipes the excess from her mouth. She stands, her shorts riding high up on her hips, and time slows again as she plops her mug down and then comes to stand in front of him. He sits back, so that he can see all of her, until she’s sliding into his lap, and then he can really see all of her, just in the curve of her smile. And then she kisses him.

The taste of her is unbelievable, like the cream she’s been drinking and like something else warmer, something else sweeter. It’s been months since he’s kissed anyone, and the times had been few and far between before, but Barry knows that nothing has ever, could ever, compare to the feeling of kissing Iris West. She’s so soft on top of him, so much warmer than he would have thought, and he’s so overwhelmed with the feel of her, that he doesn’t know what to do outside of kissing her.

Iris takes the lead. She grips both of his hands in hers, placing one at her waist and the other at her hip, and then she sinks her fingers into his hair. The kiss turns deeper, the slide of her mouth against his, the slip of her tongue between his lips, the soft clash of teeth as they figure each other out. He tries to learn her, to adjust. She likes when he nips at her bottom lip, when he brings into his mouth to suck, so he takes advantage of that, swallowing the sounds of her moans. He likes the way her fingers tip down his throat, her nails lightly digging into his skin. 

It is the sort of kiss that is written about, odes to the shape of her lips, sonnets that praise the taste of her tongue. There are songs, made for nights like this, for faint lights. and warm hands and hearts pounding. If he had the ability, he would pen poems about her, about her thick thighs spread over his lap and the heat of her body he swears he can feel through the fabric of their clothes.

She pulls back, her lids lowered, those chocolate eyes more black than brown now. She licks her lips again, as she watches him, as if chasing the taste of him, and Barry groans low in his throat. Her response is to smile at him, easy and seductive.

“Want to go into my bedroom?”

Barry’s hands tighten on her hips. “I want to go anywhere with you.”

It becomes, Barry decides, the best night of his life. She climbs off of him, and takes his hand, pulling him down the hall. He only takes enough of a glance around to know that the blues and the yellows and golds extend to this room too, accents to the soft white comforter over her queen sized bed. He sees the matching dresser and bookshelf, and it’s all pieces of her that Barry hopes he gets to explore.

She instructs him to take his clothes off, and he does, peeling off his shirt, his sweatpants, his boxers and socks too. Her clothes come off in quick and elegant movements, and Barry laments not being able to stare at her for longer, at the even, deep brown skin and the full breasts hanging heavy, her nipples like the perfect pieces of chocolate chips she’d melted earlier. Her belly is flat, hips round, calves shapely, and the look of her warms him from the inside.

He has very little control, and he happily gives it up, falling onto his back when she pushes him down and crawls atop him again. She uses the sharp tips of her nails and the wide flat of her tongue to trace constellations into his skin, to connect the dots across his chest, the dots at the slight v of his hips; to stamp her name on the imperfections marring the skin of his thighs. It’s a heady feeling, only multiplied when Iris takes the length of him into her hand and then into her mouth. His head drops back onto the pillow, her mouth warm and wet. She takes as much of him as she can and then she pulls back to the tip. She gathers the spit in her mouth, letting it drip down his dick, and then she’s sucking him with purpose, her hands sliding up and down where her mouth can’t reach, the suction of her lips glorious. She swallows him down, the slight gag when he hits the back of her throat releasing something primal in him.

“Fuck, Iris,” he says and it’s something more like a growl, the feel of her indescribable. She hums around him, and then pulls away with a pop, giving her attention to his swollen, aching testicles. He lets her suck him until his breathing grows labored, and then he’s pulling gently at her curly hair, stuttering, “want, want to come in you.”

She stays on her knees in front of him, for moments longer, and then she smiles, the sultry one she’d thrown at him in the grocery store, the one she’d thrown him in the kitchen, the smile that’s got him in her bedroom.

“It’s insane how beautiful you are,” he tells her, and he likes the way it makes her body flush, a red tinge to her skin. He motions for her now, and she crawls back up, settling her crotch over him. He notes the warmth of her pussy on his belly, and it makes his own grin a touch sordid.

“Is this because of me?” He finds himself asking. “Did sucking me off get you wet?”

Her eyes flutter closed briefly. 

“I like it,” she says, “when you say these dirty things I’m not expecting.”

“It’s only because of you,” he says, and then he curls his finger around her neck and brings her down to kiss him.

This kiss is wet, open-mouthed, filthy. Barry wonders how he got here, how a short walk in the snow led to this gorgeous person writhing atop him, mumbling increasingly coarse things in his ear. He touches her where he can: fingers tipping down her spine and over her hips; hands kneading her breasts, pinching gently at the hardened peaks of her nipples; thumbing her swollen clit until the wet of her is dripping down her thighs.

Then Barry flips her over, under the insatiable need to have her spread out beneath him, and he watches her tiny hands cover the length of him with a condom. 

When he’s finally inside of her, Barry swears that, when she kicks him out of her bed, he’ll do everything in his power to be worthy of her. As her thighs clamp at his hips and he swivels them until he’s buried all the way inside her, he vows to work to be enough for her, and for him too.

She’s so wet, as he rocks into her, and he tells her so, murmuring into her ear, “god, you’re so wet, baby; you feel so good around me.” She talks back, as she digs her nails into his skin enough to leave scars. “I, I never,” she whispers, her voice is soft like white falling snow and sweet like warm, melting chocolate. “I never guessed you’d feel like this.”

She milks him, gripping him in her heat, clenching around him as pulls out, letting her wetness flood him when he pushes back in. Their rhythm is steady, rocking and sliding, rocking and sliding. He holds onto her thigh, hiking it over his hip, and he tangles his hands in her hair enough to hold her steady, enough to take her mouth again. His mouth is gentler on her, mimicking the slide of his body. This feels deeper somehow, their bodies so close he’s touching every single part of her. She pulls away only enough to gasp against his mouth, “damn, Barry Allen,” falling off against his lips, followed by a laugh that turns into a low, slow “ _ffffuuuucccckkkk.”_

When he comes, it’s at the same time that she’s clenching around his dick, their bodies slick with sweat. He falls on top of her, and their breathing mellows out. Eventually, he tries to move away from her, but she holds him there, wrapping her arms around him and pressing her face into his neck.

“You okay?” he whispers.

He feels her nod against him. “Perfect."

************

She doesn’t kick him out after.

Instead, they clean up and then she asks Alexa to play a song, _I want a snowfall kind of love, the kind that keeps you in bed all day; oh I want to walk through with you, and watch it all melt away,_ and she curls into him, her naked breasts pressing against his side, her leg thrown over his thigh. He’s in the space between exhaustion and awareness, his eyes heavy lidded as he comes back down from the high that was being inside Iris West.

There’s a sort of ambiance to the room now, one that makes this all seem more romantic and intimate than he knows what to do with. The blinds are open to the wall length windows that make these apartments worth it, and the night is dark, any stars in the navy blue blanket overshadowed by the softly falling snow. The flakes are thicker now, sticking to where they drop. It has the makings of a storm, especially in how much faster it’s coming down than when he’d been walking in it.

He can imagine them, in only a few hours, when the sun has barely crested the horizon and the cold is settling into the room, being wrapped up in Iris again. He can imagine even more, when the snow melts and the sun is on its way back down again, holding Iris’s hand in his as she walks beside him, in red high heels that match his shirt, in an easy smile that looks like his own, as they head to where they’ll talk and laugh and flirt over red wine and candlelight.

And because he can imagine it, because he _wants_ to imagine it, to make it a reality, he finds himself telling her all of it: about _The West Wing_ marathon he’d been watching since the start of the month because he remembers it had been his parents’ favorite show and he’d seen that it was on Netflix; about his attempts to befriend one of his colleagues, Cisco, because he’s never really had a friend and he thinks that he can be one, if he tries hard enough; about the crashed car that changed his life and the pain of Christmas lights and shiny tinsel that he’s begun talking to someone to alleviate.

For a moment, he thinks he’s said too much. Sure, she’s pretty and she’s sweet and she makes him feel like no one ever has before. But he’s only met her hours ago and it’s this, this kind of baggage, that’s kept him from reaching out, from trying to get close to anyone.

She still doesn’t kick him out. Instead, she tells him about her own childhood, about how distant parents had turned into divorced ones and how the strained tension hadn’t left just because they were no longer in the house yelling at one another. She tells him the struggles she’s had at work, at having to write whatever the paper deems as “black issues,” and the double edged sword that comes with wanting to write universal stories, and also wanting to take those black stories for fear no one else will write them with as much care and nuance. She explains how unlucky in love she’s been, how her thoughts are dismissed because men think she’s too pretty or how her well-earned independence is far too _independent_ for them to see her seriously. It makes her more real to him, and Barry ponders how quickly one could fall in love.

They talk, until the sun does rise over Iris's window sill. And Barry rolls onto his back to pull her atop him, fingering into her until she’s dripping down his wrist. He sheathes himself and pushes himself into her, wet hands holding onto her hips as she takes over, grinding down onto him until they’re both a simpering, moaning mess, soaked and sated. After, Iris cuddles on top of him again, her mouth against his throat as she tells him, “of course, we’ll go out later,” when he whispers the question into hair.

They fall asleep to the still quietly falling snow.

_Won't you bury me in your quiet love, oh bury me in your quiet love, bury me in your quiet love, and we will blow away._

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all! If you're a celebrator, happy holidays! If you're like me and you just like to stuff your face and drink wine and be with family, I hope you're doing it all smartly and safely.
> 
> I hope this little one shot brings you all some holiday joy. If you like it, please leave a kudos or a comment. There's a one or two shot that's festering in my mind so I hope to be back not too far in the new year.
> 
> Happy Reading,  
> Elle


End file.
